Product Description

A World War II fighter pilots extraordinary memoir--already a bestseller in the U. K. Wellums First Light deserves to be read for many years to come. --The Times (London) An extraordinarily gripping and powerful story. --The Evening Standard (London) Geoffrey Wellum joined the Royal Air Force in 1939, at age seventeen. After piloting Spitfires during the Battle of Britain and flying nearly 100 missions over occupied France, he was mentally and physically exhausted--an old man at age twenty-two. Now, drawing on notes he wrote at the time, Wellum re-creates his wartime experiences. The book vividly evokes the realities of wartime flying--the camaraderie, the scrambles, the dogfights, the night flights, the foul weather. But it also gives us a moving portrait of a boy who anguishes over the loss of friends during training, broods over fears of failure--and survives to become a battle-hardened ace, inured to death but never unaffected by it. Richly detailed, engagingly written, and emotionally resonant, First Light is a treat for military history buffs and anyone drawn to dramatic coming-of-age stories. Geoffrey Wellum (Cornwall, UK) left the RAF in 1961 and worked for a commodities brokerage in London until his retirement.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #384769 in Books
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From the Back Cover
'Wellum's First Light deserves to be read for many years to come. ' -The Times (of London) High praise for England's bestselling First Light. . . 'An extraordinarily gripping and powerful story. ' -The Evening Standard (London) 'A work of exceptional quality. . . a passion and immediacy which make it compelling reading. ' -Max Hastings, author of Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy 'A remarkable book, amazingly fresh, honest, and modest. . . utterly gripping; it is without question one of the best books I have read in the last few years. ' -Professor Richard Holmes, author of Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket 'Startlingly vivid recollections. . . this is air war at its most intense. . . his readers get a strong sense of immediacy. ' -The Spectator (London) 'Geoffrey Wellum's book is a wonderfully evocative find. . . a book for all ages and generations, a treasure. ' -Daily Express (London)

About the Author
GEOFFREY WELLUM was born in Walthamstow, England, and educated at Forest School. At age seventeen, he joined the RAF on a short-service commission in August 1939 and served with the 92nd Squadron throughout the Battle of Britain. In March 1942 he joined the 65th Squadron as Flight Commander and, later that year, led a group of eight Spitfires in the relief of Malta during Operation Pedestal. He later served as a test pilot on Typhoon fighter planes and as a gunnery instructor until the end of the war. He remained with the RAF after the war, retiring in 1961 to take a position as a commodities broker in London. He now lives in Cornwall, England.

Customer Reviews

First Light
A most moving and vivid account of a young mans journey from boyhood to manhood in a very dangerous time. A young man who upon leaving school has a desire to fly 'fighters', a young man who succeeds in his ambition and has to watch his friends and peers perish both in training and in combat in the skys above England and Europe during the second world war. It is a tribute to those young men and to the author himself that determination against all odds by a handful of young men really did make a difference to the lives and wellbeing of a nation. It is also tells of the duresses that these young men had to bare,and how prolonged stress can even cause the fittest of men to breakdown, and recover.

A magnificent read, and one I could not put down. A real insight into what it took to be "one of the few."

An Excellent Book
'First Light' is one of those books that is destined to be remembered as a "classic" and rightly so. This is a wonderful book of a young man who joined the Royal Air Force before the start of World War Two and who later fought during the Battle of Britain and survived. Most of the book is taken up with his training as a pilot and the fighting during the Battle of Britain. However the book continues on to cover his role in Operation Pedestal and the fighting over Malta until his return to England as a tired and worn out pilot.

I truly enjoyed Geoffrey Wellum's story of his training and chuckled a good many times whilst reading about one thing or another. Mr Wellum has a wonderful way of telling a story and you can easily picture the details as you read his narrative. I found myself amazed as I read the book of how much this young man and his friends suffered in defending their country and their mates in the air.

This is an account that anyone who has an interest in WW2 aviation will be delighted in. It's well told, full of humor, sadness, and death defying flying and combat action. These men, as young as 18, flew one of the fastest and deadliest aircraft at the time and many didn't make it through the campaign or even their first mission. You read with sadness the loss of many good pilots and friends but still the men continue flying day after day facing terrible odds.

I really enjoyed the author's style of writing, he was witty, descriptive and came across with a sense of telling a story with understated facts. He downplayed his own role during the Battle of Britain and I was really hooked on the narrative as it moved along at a cracking pace. I found it hard to put the book down late at night, which brought forth a moan from my wife about turning the lamp off or else!

This is a great story and in finishing I would like to add the following comment from a great historian about this book: "A work of exceptional quality.....his prose has a passion and immediacy which make it compelling reading" - Max Hastings. He's not wrong either!

repetitive
This book certainly does not rate more than two stars. It is repetitive ------ with beers, toast, tea, clouds and dozens of names. The trouble is some sixty years after the experiences Wellum tries to write as a twenty year old rather than tell the whole story other than `Boys own' Except sometimes when he moralizes with hindsight which is dreadful. There is no mention in the book whatever of any German attacks on the airfields he flew from which were well bashed by Goring and his boys prior to the Battle of Britian.
The feel of what went on does not come through with the passion it deserves.